


Going In and Coming Out

by SoniaVice



Series: Inside Outside [3]
Category: Justified
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 17:56:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14939091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoniaVice/pseuds/SoniaVice
Summary: Jack visits Raylan's house in Miami on a very important job, and then, in between patching the bullet holes and cleaning up the mess, Raylan finally sorts out his own life.Everyone was always waiting for Raylan to come on stage so their lives could start up again, Jack thought bitterly. He was in a bitter mood, itching to kill someone to make it go away.





	1. Jack Goes In

**Author's Note:**

> The third and final instalment of the saga of Raylan and Jack is where the guns come out of the holsters. This is set in the space between the end of the series and the sun-drenched idyllic future we saw a glimpse of with Raylan and his family, where it seemed like all the guns had been tucked away out of sight. 
> 
> This part contains: references to past threats of sexual assault of a minor, depictions of present threats of sexualized violence and sexual coercion, threats of violence to adults, a child, and the deaths of a large number of bad guys. There is also homophobic language, drug use, alcohol use, and sexual situations.

Jack was no goddamn army boy. He was a man unused to crawling in dirt, but he was doing it, filled with the need to do it. He was still shocked by how strong the drive was to keep going, to ignore the danger, and to risk his carefully built life crashing to dust. But he had given himself up to it. He'd already chosen his path, so he duck-waddled along the side of a brick bungalow in Miami with his gun in his hand.

He wasn't sure there was anyone inside the house, not yet, but it was going to fill up with very bad people, and Jack was one man with one gun.

He paused, thinking he'd heard a noise, and he crept more quietly to the corner of the house. If he could get around to the back, he could get inside and get the drop on the fuckers who were on their way.

He heard nothing more, so he moved with more speed. He didn't have all day. He made to go around the corner, the moment of maximum danger, so he had his gun in position, and, "Jesus, Deputy," he hissed, "I damn near shot you."

Tim Gutterson sighed and cracked his neck. "Same. Why are you here?"

"Guys talk in strip clubs. Strippers talk to the boss. The boss talks to me."

Tim nodded, and tilted his head at a shed that was a few feet away, and they both duck-walked at speed to the far side of the modest shelter. It would block the sound of their voices, at least. "I got a tip," Tim said, quietly. "And I can't get Raylan on the phone."

"You're here on your own?" Jack asked, horrified. Which was hypocritical, so was he.

"Raylan not answering his phone is weird, and I considered looping in my new boss, Raylan's boss, and then the question will come up: Why is Nicky Augustine's brother so intent on killing a US Marshal?"

Jack blanked his face. He had no idea who knew the currently relevant piece of the many things Raylan had told him on the phone while drunk, horny, lonely and feeling sorry for himself.

Tim and Jack both heard the noise of voices close by, and they ducked down and stayed motionless.  

They had a view of the street through a slat in a fence, and the scene was a flash of a woman and a small child followed by raised voices. "Shit, shit, fuck, goddamn, shit," Tim whispered.

"Tell me," Jack demanded.

"Winona and Willa. They've been grabbed. Fuck."

"What the fuck are they doing here?" Jack said, and then he was off, as fast as he could go to the spot that would give some cover and give him a view of the front door of the house. Tim joined him half a minute later, almost too far behind; he'd risked being seen.

They watched Winona and the child be bundled inside the house, and Jack hung his head and breathed deeply. He needed a plan. He needed an in. He took off the windbreaker he had on over a tight black t-shirt and dark trousers and slipped out of the gun holster, leaned on one hip to dig in his pocket for the extra clip and the silencer. He pulled out his wallet and checked it was clean. He knew his phone was, he never carried his real phone on a job, but he stacked it with his discards in a neat pile and said to Tim, "Tell me everything you know about Winona Givens."

"Hawkins," Tim said. "They never got married again. What are you—"

"I'm going in," Jack said. "Tell me. How old?"

Tim gave him a guess, thought he knew closer with the kid, said she wasn't quite school age, and offered up nothing much in the way of details on either of them.

"She a runner? Pilates? What?" Jack had half a plan already, an oldie and not that good, but a workable character. He was too old anymore to pass as a dumb college student or some other harmless-seeming youth.

"Yoga, I think," Tim said, after a thoughtful pause. "You won't have a gun."

"They'll have extra," Jack said. "Yoga can work. Fuck. I need a voice. Shit, where the hell you from?'

Tim blinked. "Virginia. Originally. I lived out west for a while before the Army."

Jack nodded. "Cary Cooper. I can do that. Gary Cooper, only really fucking gay. I can do that."

"I have a rifle," Tim said. "In the car."

It sounded like Jack should care, so he just shook his head, mimed confusion.

"I was a sniper. I am a sniper."

"Oh, baby, that's the best news I heard all day." Jack said, thinking he was halfway to Gay Gary, but it needed work. "How long for you to get in position?"

"Ten minutes, maybe more. I never saw Raylan. I don't know where he is."

"The kid is the point, Tim. Raylan can cover his own ass."

Tim reared back a little and then nodded. "I'm waiting to see if they shoot you at the door, and then I'm calling the cavalry no matter what they do."

"Okay." Jack turned and ran to the corner of the lot and stopped to brush the signs of his skulking from his clothes. He moved out onto the street with care and sauntered to the door to Raylan Givens' house. The neighbourhood was trying to decide if it was on the way up or on the way down, and the houses were small bungalows, typical of an older, less glamorous Miami.

A thug opened the door when he rang the bell, but Jack acted like that was a normal thing that happened. "Oh, hi, I'm—you know," he looked around, and found the numbers on the house. "I am at the right house. I'm looking for Winona? She wanted to meet here today? Is she here?"

"Now's a bad time," the thug said, but Jack turned on a blazing smile and pushed forward. "Oh, honey, you know, everyone says that, but a commitment to personal training is a lifelong — hey wait a damn minute. You aren't trying to put me out of a job are you? You are totally the wrong sort of man for a woman like—"

"What the fuck, Lukas?" A bigger, uglier man shouted as he stepped into the foyer. He had a gun, so Jack acted like an ordinary, very gay personal yoga instructor would act, and he screamed in his highest register. It was piercing, if he did say so himself.

The thug at the door grabbed him and dragged him inside, and he'd made it past the first point he was most likely to get shot. He tried to keep track of time, counting on Tim to get in position.

Door thug, Lukas, gripped his arm hard enough to leave marks, and dragged him into the living room. Winona was on the sofa, looking spitting mad, and the kid was on her lap, terrified. Not ideal.

Jack was at point two where he was most likely to get shot, so he sold it like he was convincing a john he was turned on by sucking his ugly dick. "What in the hell is going on?" He demanded, trying ineffectually to shake himself from Lukas's grip. "I am only Miz Hawkins' yoga instructor, so whatever this all is, I don't figure in." His voice got very shrill by the end of that.

Thug Two punched him in the mouth, which he'd been hoping for. It gave Winona time to think, and it focused his own killer instinct nicely. Thug Two started cursing at him in the usual way, and Jack was a bit amused to see Winona cover her daughter's ears. Mustn't hear the word faggot, but guns waving around were nothing to worry about.

He ended up on the sofa beside Winona, bleeding from a cut lip in a way that was more annoying that painful. He watched their captors while trying to look afraid.  

Thug Two had the look of a man who would haul one of them into the nearest bedroom when merely holding them captive got dull. Jack needed to make sure that was him not Winona. He tried to cry convincingly to make the man hate him some more.

He was bitterly amused that they didn't even tie his hands.

Thug Two and Lukas were muttering in the doorway about the lack of Raylan. Everyone was always waiting for Raylan to come on stage so their lives could start up again, Jack thought bitterly. He was in a bitter mood, itching to kill someone to make it go away.

"Who are you?" Winona asked, barely audible.

"Not a Marshal," Jack said, in the same tone. "I don't play by their rules."

Lukas marched over like he was the man in charge and sat on the chair opposite them. "You will sit there and say nothing," he said brandishing the gun.

Jack was fine with that. More time wasted meant more time for Tim. He concentrated on looking terrified and feeling jumpy, so it would look natural. Thug two came in with his phone in hand and bent to confer with Lukas. Jack heard enough to know that Petros Augustine was on his way.

Jack had heard of him, never met him, luckily, but his reputation was that he was slightly less insane than his brother, but only slightly. He wouldn't be coming alone, Jack figured.

"Bring the kid," Lukas barked at Winona, standing up.

Jack flinched and whimpered a little. Lukas had to deal with Winona's initial refusal to comply, her anger simmering but not boiling over. Eventually Lukas had her and the kid hustled down a hall, and Jack tried not to meet Thug Two's eyes, worried his act wasn't perfect.

Now would be an excellent time for Thug Two to get horny and demand the little faggot suck him off, however. Jack tried to make his body seem smaller, and he licked the blood away from his lip. That did it. Thug Two came over and leaned down and poked him with the gun. "You nervous, sweetie?"

"Ye-es," Jack croaked out. "Just, please let me go. Please."

"Say that again," Thug Two said gruffly.

Jack looked up at him, trying not to let any contempt show. He'd always been a bit bad at that, which is why he'd changed careers younger than he'd needed to. "Please?" he said, "Please let me go."

Thug Two grabbed his crotch, and Jack had to avoid any sign of triumph. Five more minutes, and he'd have a gun and only Lukas to deal with, but that all went to hell. The front door burst open, Lukas hurried back in, Winona dragging along behind him, yelling at him to just let her daughter go, and a man who had to be Petros was filling the room with two trailing thugs of his own. Five to kill, now. Jack didn't have to try so hard to look frightened.

"Where the fuck is Raylan Givens?" Petros shouted.

"No one knows, boss," Thug Two said. Thugs Three and Four started a routine sweep of the house Lukas had never done. Lukas dumped Winona on the sofa again, and said, "We've got his kid locked up in the bathroom."

"Great. Who the hell is the faggot?"

"Some yoga instructor," Lukas said.

"You checked that?" Petros said.

"He just showed up, looking for the wife." Lukas gestured at Winona.

"Check him," Petros said with withering scorn. "No, fuck that. Joey?"

Thug Four came in from the kitchen; he was the biggest one, as tall as Raylan, and Petros gestured at Jack and said, "Pat him down."

Joey yanked Jack to his feet and expertly inspected his person, not feeling him up, so there was no hope there of an in. He rifled Jack's wallet and found nothing but a small bit of cash and some cards that made it seem Jack lived in Miami. "Looks legit," Joey said, shoving him back and keeping the wallet. "Where's your phone?"

"In my car," Jack said, waving vaguely, trying to make his hand shake.

"Where's your husband?" Petros said to Winona, in a way that said he'd dismissed Jack from his attention, which was good.

"Not here," she answered. "And that's all I know."

"Call him," Petros said.

"They took my phone."

"Lukas!" Petros said. Lukas had gone to take Joey's place in the kitchen, Jack assumed the back door was there, and they were keeping a man on it. Lukas returned while Thug Three moved to cover the kitchen. No one seemed to be covering the front door, which made Jack wonder if Petros had left a man outside. If so, he hoped Tim had sights on him.

Lukas forced Winona to call Raylan, and then he bent close enough to hear the call not go through. Jack could see Winona struggle not to flinch away from the man.

"Where is he?" Petros asked.

"I don't know. I haven't heard from him today," Winona said, her voice strong.

"Check that," Petros said to Joey, who took the phone and started examining it.

"Nothing today," Joey said.

Petros said, "Lukas, you and Geo hold the scene here. If the little faggot acts up, shoot him, but only if you have to."

Petros raised a hand, and Joey and Thug Three followed him back out the front door. If Tim wasn't a cop, there'd be three shots and three dead guys, assuming they had a man on the door outside, but Tim was who he was. Jack couldn't fault him for that. Tim also would have called for backup. You took the bad with the good with those people, no way around it.

Geo did not wait long to get back to where he'd been, which suited Jack as much as it disgusted him. He really didn't want to have suck his dick.

"Watch her," he said to Lukas, and then he grabbed Jack and hauled him to the kitchen in the usual way — arm held up too high for him to walk properly, pace so fast that he risked falling.

"I want to hear you say please some more." Geo said, voice full of slime, straight from his soul.

Jack whimpered and backed up, drawing Geo after him, while Geo told him in all the words Jack had heard a thousand times before what he wanted to do to him. It would take all day, maybe two, and most of it made Jack want to laugh at him. But he acted scared, said please, to please his man, like you had to, while he backed up until the stove was at his right hand. There was a knife block over on the far side of the counter, but the country boy staple of a cast iron frying pan was on the stove top, greasy with the remains of something that smelled of bacon.

Geo grunted when Jack swung it with all his strength and hit him on the side of the head. He went down, with a little help from Jack, quietly enough. Jack made sure Geo wasn't moving, took his gun, and ran for the back door. He could run all the way, get out, even tell himself he was going to circle around and find Tim and wait for the cavalry, but he still had the same drive making his heart ice cold and determined. He wasn't letting Petros Augustine near that kid.

He popped the lock on the back door to open and ran as silently as he could back to the doorway that led to the living room. No one was visible, and there was a sort of half hallway between the two rooms with a wall on one side that had a door he assumed led to a utility room. The tunnel effect was created by a large piece of furniture along the opposite wall, the sort of sideboard you filled with china and heirlooms. It was empty of everything but dust.

Jack eased the door open, and slid inside the room crowded with appliances. He closed the door all the way, left the light off, and stayed tight to the hollow plastic fake wooden door, breathing quietly.

Someone came in the back door. Tim, maybe. Whoever it was, they were quiet and alone, so not the cops. They moved right past the door, and if it had been open a crack, Jack could have seen them. But then, they'd know he was there too.

He heard voices, and he wrenched the door open and ran, hoping whoever it was wouldn't shoot him, taking him for a thug. He dove to the floor as soon as he had the whole living room in sight, and aimed his body at the half-baked cover of an armchair. He had seen Winona on the floor behind the sofa and heading for the room her kid was in on hands and knees. Lukas had a gun on her, and Raylan god damn Givens had his on Lukas.

Jack stayed where he was. So did everyone else. If he'd been in better position, standing, he could have taken out Lukas. Raylan was talking, trying to convince Lukas to give it up, but Jack could see the frosted glass of the sidelights beside the front door, and there was movement out there.

It all happened so fast.

The door opened, Lukas turned his head minutely, and Jack shot him from the floor, a rising bullet that got him in the gut, but it travelled up. It would have been enough. Raylan got him in the head. One of them should have taken the front door.

Petros and his two thugs roared in, and Jack stood up and got someone in the arm, Joey, he thought, but not his shooting arm. Raylan missed wide and then held his fire as Joey had his gun on Winona, who hadn't made it much farther down the hall. Raylan didn't lower his weapon. Thug Three came right at Jack, and he damn near shot him, but it wasn't just the kid. He knew that. It was also Winona who was supposed to get out alive.

The thug lifted Jack half off his feet, and held him in a lazy grip. Jack let his arm droop and his grip on the gun go slack, like a guy who didn't know what he was doing, and Thug Three shook him like a rag doll, snarled at him to drop it, but he never looked to see if Jack had complied.

Petros strode in like he was about to unzip and piss on the floor to show who owned the place. He opened his mouth to say something to Raylan, and Jack saw what he mistook for a second as the red dot of a laser sight on Petros Augustine's high forehead.

It wasn't that at all, it was the blooming blood spot of an entry wound. Augustine's head barely snapped back, the velocity of the bullet too low. He dropped, and the sound of the glass of the big window in the living room wall cascading to the floor seemed to come after Petros' body hit the floor.

Thug Three tightened his hold on Jack, and Joey had already moved at an unexpected angle. Raylan missed him with two shots, and Joey was big enough he got Raylan in a grip from behind, gun to his head. They were less than 10 feet away, facing each other, Thug Three behind Jack, gun to his side, and Raylan locked into place by Joey. Joey was a tall man, and broad. There was enough shoulder and neck to the one side of Raylan.

Raylan was looking at Jack, no one else. If Tim took out Thug Three, Jack would go with him, he figured. The window was almost at his back, the way they were turned. The man holding Jack wasn't large, and he was crouched down so nothing stuck out, more cognizant of his surroundings than Joey, or just less arrogant. If Raylan tried to take out the man holding Jack, Jack was dead.

"Well, I guess you have us right where you want us," Raylan said, looking at Jack, meeting his eyes. Raylan raised his gun hand, so Jack did the same, letting the gun dangle off one finger through the trigger guard. They looked like they had their hands up in total surrender.

Jack didn't take his eyes off of Raylan, and the sound of voices faded away. There was no one else there, just him, just Raylan. He wasn't even sure how he knew, if Raylan's eyes showed something or if they'd just independently decided it was time to end it.

Jack spun his gun into a proper grip and fired, and the red hot pain of a bullet tearing through his body accompanied the sight of Raylan dropping to the floor.

It hurt like fuck, but he had to move, so he moved. He was on top of Thug Three, so he rolled, grunting when he landed on his left shoulder. He got half up, braced against the armchair and put two in Thug Three just to be sure. He couldn't move his left arm, and the hole in his chest near his shoulder told him why.

He crawled on his knees around the armchair and saw no one. He could hear yelling, shouting, and Geo was on the kitchen floor, maybe not quite dead. Jack tried to stand to go that way and finish him. The room filled up with people, cops, EMTs, all of them, and he ignored them and got standing up, almost, by hauling himself up the armchair.

Raylan was on his knees holding onto Winona, no sign of any blood. Jack had shot as close to Raylan's left ear as he'd dared, and he'd been afraid his aim had abandoned him given the shot he'd known was going to hit him. He'd been afraid he'd look over and see Raylan dead.

The chair was right there, so Jack sat in it and let the soft upholstery soak up his blood.

Raylan found him before any EMT had figured out he was the only live but bleeding person. His black shirt hit the damage. "Jack, jesus christ. Jack." Raylan sank to his knees and pressed a towel to his shoulder, and the pressure just made the blood flow.

"Is the guy dead?" Jack asked. "In the kitchen?"

"Looked it."

"I need to make sure," Jack told him. "Gimme my gun, and I'll make sure. Don't have to observe the niceties. Just look the other way."

"Jack, come on, calm down. He ain't moving."

Raylan waved over the EMT who moved Raylan away and started cutting away Jack's shirt.

"I want to know if that guy's dead, Raylan," Jack insisted.

"Which one?" the EMT asked.

"Guy on the kitchen floor."

"The man is dead," the EMT said. "And his zipper is open."

Raylan raised a brow.

"Go look after your kid, Raylan," Jack said, annoyed.

"Are you okay?" Raylan asked.

"You shot me, Raylan," he said, all his adrenaline reaction coming out as anger. "You shot me, so no, I'm not okay."

"No artery looks hit, but gunshot wounds are never clean or easy," the EMT said. "We'll get you to the hospital as soon as, ah!"

The clatter of a stretcher drew everyone's attention. And they had to move a table to fit it in to where Jack sat.

"You missed my head by almost nothing," Raylan said. "Got the guy clean in the neck."

"Good," Jack said. "I met an old friend today," he added, looking at Raylan and then glancing at Augustine's body.

"Oh," Raylan said. "Oh, did you? Is he going straight home?"

"I would if I were him," Jack said, and then he had to concentrate on the pain of being loaded onto the stretcher.

The EMT shot him up with some nice drugs in the back of the ambulance. The man, young and gay and reasonably attractive, seemed utterly unfazed by gun violence and multiple dead bodies. God bless America. "If I hit on you, it's the drugs talking," Jack told him. "Try not to take offence."

The guy smiled and patted his leg. "It's only offensive when the guys like that one in the kitchen do it."


	2. Raylan Comes Out

"Are you working today?" Winona asked.

Raylan was occupying the breakfast nook that looked out onto the road in front of her house, and he had a genuine paper newspaper spread out on the table. He'd read the baseball scores, not much else. "I am at your disposal," he said, trying to lighten the mood. Winona was frowning at him.

She got coffee and came and sat facing him, which put her back to the window, and it took all of Raylan's self control not to ask her to move. Tell her to. Start a fight with her about it.

"You can't just camp out here forever. Be my bodyguard when Richard isn't here," she said.

"What if I like it here," Raylan countered, ignoring all talk of the new boyfriend as usual.

"You can't put your life on hold because I'm afraid. I can't do this. We have to at least act normal until it feels natural."

"I am afraid," Raylan said, sitting up and leaning forward. "I'm afraid that the next time no one will get wind of this and there won't be someone there to protect you."

"Someone." Winona looked away. "This Jack Whiteside person, you mean."

"Tim," Raylan said. "Just 'cause you never saw him, don't mean he wasn't one reason we're all breathing."

"That's his job," Winona said, dismissively. Like Tim hadn't been risking that very job to save their lives.

Raylan didn't say that. He couldn't have that fight, that Winona both expected and resented his protection was just what he lived with. At least they were all living.

"You slept with him," Winona said quietly.

Raylan stopped himself from cracking a joke that she was asking about Tim Gutterson. He knew what she meant. "Yeah," Raylan said, not seeing the value in a lie. He'd never lied. Not about that. He'd just never said anything much about it at all.

"When?"

Raylan looked at her, waited for her to look at him. "Why does that matter?"

"It just does."

"He was watching me. Maybe assigned to watch me, I don't know. On the Quarles case. Back when you were living with your sister."

"When I was pregnant," Winona said, accused maybe.

"When you were living with your sister, and we were divorced," Raylan said, voice tight.

"Assigned?" Winona wrinkled up her nose and shook her head. "He's a criminal."

"He was. I guess." Raylan sighed. "I know he is. Look, he never really told me that whole story. He was posing as a hustler to keep an eye on our investigation for someone higher up the food chain"

"Do they have paperwork in the mob," she said musingly. "Reports and reprimands and commendations?"

"Usually a reprimand is a bullet, but any power structure looks like any other after a while. I don't think Jack ever had to fill out a report for drawing on someone though."

"He looked as comfortable with a gun in his hand as you do."

"That was weird," Raylan said. "I've never seen him like that. Last I knew he owned some clubs in Kentucky, was getting out of the dirty business."

"Management track," Winona said.

"Yeah, unlike me."

"Raylan," Winona said, annoyed. "You are what you are."

"I know that," he said, not sure how his inability to play office politics was suddenly leading to a fight.

"And Jack isn't the only man."

Oh. That part of who he was. It was too much to hope for that she could be got off track by Raylan confessing to all the women he had slept with too. One at the same time as Jack. He tried to imagine Jack ever picking a fight over what his dick led him into and then felt guilty instantly.

There was still no point lying about it. "Not the first, no," Raylan said.

"Or the last," Winona added, not a question. She picked up her coffee and walked off upstairs. She spent all her time in the same room as Willa, playing her own game of guard on the door after the bad guys were all dead. Maybe she slept there, he didn't know.

There were FBI stationed on the house, but Raylan figured they had a day before that got downgraded to some Miami PD. He told himself it was that fact that spurred him out of her house and home for a shower before he went to the hospital.

His house was a disaster, but at least he'd got the blood soaked armchair out of there and the window boarded up. The holes weren't patched yet, and the blood on the living room floor was still a stain.

He looked at his hand when he came out of the shower, and he could see the blood seeping up to fill the spaces between his fingers until he had to make a tight fist to banish the image. He'd had to scrub off his ring after, and he'd found traces in his watch band the next day.

The hospital was like they all were, and he missed his hat powerfully when he had to wait and had nothing to twirl in his hands. When he was allowed in, he thought Jack looked small and pale in the bed, clean white bandage showing against bronzed skin on his shoulder. He was also stoned off his head.

"Raylan! Baby, you came to visit."

The animation in his face, the smile that was all invitation to a party he was in no shape to throw, it did make him seem alive again and chased away the image of a man bleeding out. His eyes were hooded and sleepy and made Raylan think thoughts of sex.

Jack too, it seemed. "Wanna tell you a thing," he said, laughing, huskily. "Shouldn't, but I wanna. That second time? At my place in Louisville. That was something I ain't never done before. Faked it some, a time or two. Never done it for real. Keep thinking about it sometimes."

Raylan didn't know what to say, what to do with his hands. He'd been tired, stressed out and hungover that day, and he'd started something with Jack that had taken a turn soft and gentle. It was the memory of that that had driven him to tell Jack he was in love with him. And the memory of the disaster that conversation had been heated Raylan's face, but he had no idea what to say.

"I keep thinking about it too," Raylan said, finally, hiding behind the truth.

"They're kicking me, Raylan. If I'd known you were coming I'da not done it, but I decided to have a party with the drug dispenser." Jack pointed at the self-administered pain killer, as if Raylan needed an explanation. "I'm fucking high, Raylan. Come down will be bad, but it's worth it. Not too often you get the legal high when you need it."

"When? When are they kicking you?"

"Tomorrow they said. Don't know what the hell I'll do. I don't even fucking live here." He sounded very cheerful at the prospect of nowhere to go.

"You don't live in Miami? Jack I've read the FBI interview transcript, you said you have a club here."

Jack nodded. "I do. Other things. I have things. I live in Key West, though." He burst out laughing.

Raylan couldn't help but smile and he said, "I'm sorry I had to shoot you, but I'm not sorry I got to see you like this."

"No, no, no. It's good. You had to do it. I saw that. Only way." Jack sighed. "Need to sleep. Get the fuck out, Raylan."

Raylan found out from the desk when they were discharging Jack, and he bought some supplies on the way home, started filling bullet holes in his walls and cleaning stains off the floor.

He swung by Winona's at Willa's bedtime and sat with his girl for longer than he'd planned, but she seemed to calm down with him there. He said nothing about her coming to his house. Winona had told him she'd woken up crying and asking if she had to go back, so he was avoiding even mentioning his own place.

Winona wanted him to stay, get some supper, make small talk with Richard who was coming over, but he said no. He told her he'd be busy in the morning, but he'd be around in the afternoon.

"You're going back to work?" She asked, following him to the door to speak in the privacy of the foyer. She was always fearful of what Willa would hear.

Raylan shook his head. "No. I'm off for a while. They need to sort all this out, what happened. Why it did." Raylan avoided her gaze, thought again about what he was doing, and couldn't find a reason not to do it, not a good one. "Jack's being released, and I don't know where he wants to go, but I'm going to drive him."

"Oh."

"He doesn't live in Miami."

"He said to me," Winona said, intent, suddenly. "That he didn't play by your rules. What does that mean?"

"When?"

"When they grabbed him at the door and he was claiming to be my yoga instructor. They left us alone for a minute."

"He meant he'd kill anyone he damn well felt like without hesitation," Raylan said, and then he burst out with the truth he'd kept from her.. "They had eyes on the front of my house. They watched Augustine and his boys come back in, and they didn't do nothing because they want the rules to mean something more'n they want any of us alive."

"Oh," Winona said, hand to her throat. "And he meant he doesn't care about those rules at all." She narrowed her eyes at him. "Do you?"

"I don't know. I — Art would say no. Maybe he's right. Maybe I ain't no different from Jack in a lot of ways. Look I gotta go, but you call me. Just if you want to know I'm alive, or tell me you are. But I'll be by in the afternoon."

Raylan hadn't told Jack he was coming, so he was a little worried he'd have to shoo away a driver or something. But the next morning, he found Jack in his room, dressed in dark jeans and a button up shirt that was too big, sitting on the bed and looking just like a man who'd gotten a little too high the day before.

He looked up and fixed Raylan with one of his serious looks, the kind that aged him ten years and made all of his personas he wore like suits seem frivolous. "Why are you here?"

Raylan grinned and leaned on the door frame. "I'm taking you where you want to go," he said. "They letting you out soon?"

"Paperwork should be done. I was going to call a cab and go to a hotel."

"I have a guest room, some half-filled bullet holes in my walls, and no blood stains as counter offer."

Jack shook his head, but didn't say no. "I need to take the strong pain meds for a few days. They said they weren't happy with me being alone."

"Neither am I," Raylan said. "But my place is the scene of the crime."

Jack waved that away. "Don't bother me. You serious? Or is this guilt talking?"

"I'm not sorry I shot you, so I have no guilt. Sorry I had to."

"One of us should have had the door instead of us both going for the same asshole."

"You learn you can't control every variable in a mess like that. Sometimes it all goes to shit."

"I hurt like hell," Jack said.

"Let me take you home, then," Raylan said. "Let them chase you if they want paperwork done."

Jack sat up and looked move alive. "You gonna shoot 'em if they chase me?"

"Figure I owe you, so sure."

Jack insisted on carrying his own bag. "My right arm works fine. Can even shoot my own way out of trouble if I have to."

"They have your stuff that you left in the yard," Raylan told him. "FBI maybe or PD, not sure. Your phone, your gun."

Jack shrugged, and then winced. "Phone's trash. I like the gun fine, but they ain't hard to replace."

"I need to go see Winona after lunch," Raylan said in the car on the way home. They'd made a clean getaway out of the hospital by just acting like they were allowed to go.

"How's that sitting?" Jack asked, voice flat, devoid of any emotion Raylan could get a handle on.

"She's tired of me wanting to play guard dog. She's trying to sort out how she feels, look after Willa, sort out how Willa feels — the whole stupid fucked-up mess of it. I'm trying to be the least dumbass version of myself I know how to be and not get in the way with her and her new boyfriend."

"Okay," Jack said, and he sounded tired to Raylan.

"You just hungover, or did they let you out too soon?"

"Yes," Jack snapped at him. "And I'm supposed to drink fluids, so you got any sweet tea? I like sweet tea. It's at least the colour of liquor."

"I'll get sweet tea," Raylan said, and pulled up by the store closest to his house. "You want anything else?"

"A nap, so don't take your time."

"Okay," Raylan said, and he remembered not to slam the car door. He got sweet tea, orange juice, and a big bottle of the drink that Winona used to give Willa when she was running a fever. He added a six of beer, assuming that Jack wasn't about to take his instructions on meds too seriously.

In Raylan's kitchen, Jack raised a brow at the stuff for hydrating babies, and poured out a glass of orange juice and drank it down.

"You keep that pan I killed that guy with?"

"Evidence."

"Oh, yeah," Jack looked around, like he wasn't tracking so well. "I want to sleep. And you got a phone I can use when I wake up? A burner?"

Raylan scratched his forehead. "Yeah, I do."

"Figures," Jack said, smiling. "Tell me where the guns are, too."

Raylan showed him the gun safe he'd put in in the laundry room, and gave him the combination to it. He handed over a phone when he had it open. Jack didn't even say a word at the small stack of cash inside, so Raylan said, "Take the money if you need it. Expenses, what have you."

Jack nodded. "I'm paying you back if I do. Clean cash, don't worry."

Raylan showed him the empty room with a stripped bed as the only furniture in it that counted as his guest room. Willa had her own room, but Raylan figured she'd never sleep in there again. He'd already realized he'd have to sell the house and move some place without demons haunting it.

"I got sheets," he said to Jack.

"Forget it. Get me a blanket and a pillow," Jack told him.

Jack was intent on the phone when Raylan came back with the best he could find of each. "Setting reminders for my meds."

"Here, give me that and I'll put my number in it."

Jack handed the phone over and stood and unzipped and stepped out of his jeans. Raylan hadn't seen him out of his clothes in a couple of years, but he looked the same — younger, vulnerable, small, and all of it a lie. The shirt joined the pants on the floor and Raylan handed the phone over. Jack set it on the bed by the single pillow and stripped out of his briefs.

He was under the blanket before Raylan could even wonder at what the display had been about. Raylan had spared more attention to the bandages on his shoulder than his ass or his dick anyway.

Raylan went back to Winona's and sat in her house, where he didn't belong, and watched his daughter watch a Disney movie she'd seen a hundred times — the comfort of the familiar. He let it wash over him, fingering his phone where he had stored the number of the burner he'd given Jack.

"You want to stay to supper?" Winona asked him.

"No, I should get home, see how Jack is."

"He stayed?" Winona asked.

"Can't drive yet. Needs to be on strong meds. They didn't want him alone, and I have a guest room."

Winona raised a brow. "You have a bed that came with the place in an empty room. And bullet holes in the walls."

"He don't seem bothered by all that, but I do have a patching job to do."

Winona looked at Willa who was paying them no mind, and jerked her head to the kitchen. "She asked me again if she has to go there."

"Tell her no," Raylan said.

"Forever?"

"I'll sell it. Find someplace that isn't scary. Don't worry about it."

"Just like that? You'll sell the house and move?"

"Yeah, just like that. I'll see if I can find someplace closer to you, where she sees things she knows."

Winona stared at him for a long moment and then threw herself into his arms and held on like the men with the guns had only just been killed. "God damn, Raylan, I don't know what the hell to do."

"Hold on," he said into her hair. "All you can do."

He said goodbye to Willa after a time and drove home. Jack had a gun on the bed beside his pillow when Raylan looked in on him, but he didn't wake up.

They went on for a week like that. Jack accumulated clothes, the kitchen accumulated empty jugs that had held sweet tea, and Jack let Raylan put sheets on the bed once he'd found them in a cupboard. They didn't talk much, other than when Jack told him his repair work was substandard, which was not news, or when Jack critiqued his taste in weapons, which at least led to an animated argument about ammunition choices.

Raylan split his time in his own house, where no one ever talked about dead thugs or why Petros Augustine had been after him, to Winona's, where all anyone talked about was how afraid they were but never named the thing that scared them.

Jack reminded him every day how sharp his tongue could be, and Raylan began to doubt his earlier ideas about his accent being fake. It was partly a lie; Jack wasn't a holler boy like Raylan, but his ain'ts were too natural to be feigned when he was tired or angry. He'd grown up some place like Harlan, whoever he was.

They weren't talking about that either.

Raylan wasn't allowed to go back to work, but he checked in at the office, got bogged down in a meeting with the Feebs who were investigating, and he impressed upon everyone they had all the interviews with Winona they needed.

"There's no one to arrest," Raylan said.

"We don't have the sniper," the lead FBI agent said, and Raylan sighed at him.

"I don't know who it was," Raylan said, "Someone who wanted Augustine dead." It was the same thing he said every time they mentioned Tim's contribution to the mayhem. When they pressed, he just asked them again why they'd let Augustine and his thugs walk back into the house when they had the place under surveillance by then. That shut them all up.

Jack had told the FBI and the Marshals a totally true story about his reasons for showing up that just happened to leave out a lot of details — that he'd ever seen Tim, that he'd known Raylan before the Go Go Room investigation, and a world of other incidentals like a past sexual relationship with Raylan. His story was that he'd heard through his grapevine that Raylan was in danger, and when Raylan hadn't answered his phone, he'd shown up at his house and rung the bell. No one was talking about arresting him for any of the deaths. No one had discovered that Jack Whiteside didn't exist.

Eventually, Raylan escaped into the Miami heat and stopped on the way home to buy more sweet tea and some eggs and bacon.

He came in the kitchen door, as was his habit, the garage had a door at the back that let out into the yard, and he could just cut across unseen. He found Winona and Jack at his kitchen table, half-drunk glasses of tea sweating in the humidity.

"Everything okay?" he asked, though no one looked angry.

"Winona just wanted to talk," Jack said.

"About?"

"I think she wants to know who the hell I am."

"Did you tell her?" Raylan asked, filling the refrigerator.

"As much as I ever do," Jack said, and Raylan snorted a laugh.

"He told me he felt driven to come inside this house and prevent any harm coming to our child," Winona said.

Raylan looked at her. She seemed a bit shaken, so he said, "I saw him — didn't realize it was him until after — but I saw him unlock the kitchen door. I was getting ready to come in. And then he ran back in the house. He could have left."

Jack shook his head. "If your people out front had taken Augustine and his goons out before they came back, I wouldn't be stoned on painkillers right now."

"If you'd killed Robert Quarles, Gary would still be alive," Winona said.

"Who?"

"Gary Hawkins," Winona said. "My second husband."

Jack nodded, took a drink of his tea and said, "The real estate guy. I didn't make that connection. It's true enough. I could have killed him. But, Quarles had taken a guy, a street boy off the strip. I'd come to town to see if that was an issue that could be solved — there was," Jack glanced at Raylan, "some information about Quarles past behaviour. But I didn't know if my guy was dead or not. Then Quarles grabbed another kid, and Raylan found him, killed Quarles, and it was all over. I — to be honest, I didn't want to end up in jail over it. I had plans to go straight, as Raylan once remarked."

Winona looked at Raylan and shook her head, like she was trying to clear the fog. A typical reaction with Jack, Raylan found.

"You stood there, and let Raylan shoot you," Winona said to Jack like it was an accusation.

Jack shrugged with one shoulder. "I heard he's a good shot."

"You knew he was going to do it," she said.

"Only way." Jack looked at her with his level, blank gaze, and Raylan wondered if they were going to get to whatever had gone on in the kitchen. Winona's witness statement was a little vague, and Jack's read like he'd been teleported in and picked up the iron frying pan and killed the man all in a blink. Raylan looked over at the stove. The blood there had been hard to get out of the old vinyl floor.

"I should go," Winona said. "Willa's with my mother, and I just, you know."

"I do," Raylan said. "I'll come over, whenever. You tell me when I should."

"The weekend? Oh, and Willa asked again about this place, Raylan."

"I will find someone to help me sell it."

"You're selling?" Jack asked.

"I need to find someplace she won't be afraid."

Winona said, "The therapist told me to keep her near things she recognizes, like you thought. You could find something near that park by my house, maybe." Raylan didn't mention that houses there weren't cheap.

"I can find you someone," Jack said. "Cash deal and fast."

Raylan looked at Jack. "I can't have your name on the deal."

"I know that," Jack snapped at him. "I'm glad you do, too."

"This ain't my first real estate rodeo, Jack," Raylan snapped back.

"You can conjure up someone to buy this house for cash?" Winona asked.

"It's what I do," Jack said. "Some of the time. But Raylan's right, I can't be tied to a money deal with him. I'll give him a name though. She might be able to hook you up with a forced sale in the neighbourhood you want."

"Forced?" Winona said.

"If you have cash, buying up foreclosures before they're foreclosed is a good investment. She has cash. It'll be clean, don't worry."

Raylan nodded, and Winona looked at one and then the other of them. "I guess you're very helpful in all sorts of ways," she said, and Raylan didn't know if that was as bitchy as it sounded, but he guessed the friendly chat had been bound to end.

Raylan walked her out to her car, and she turned and said, "He gave me a card for a gun instructor when I said I was going back to the range to practice regularly. He said she won't patronize."

Raylan nodded. "I bet he sends his boys there."

"His boys?"

"He owns a strip club here too, I think Or a couple. Those boys are usually pretty gay."

Winona looked at him blankly, and then she was angry, just like Jack could be in the blink of an eye. "I don't understand this, Raylan. That man who is how many kinds of criminal? But he went in this house and stood there and got shot to save our child and your goddamn Marshals did nothing."

"I was giving that deposition, Winona. I got none of those calls, no one knew anything until I was out." He'd had so many messages foretelling doom, he'd torn out of the courthouse without a word. He hadn't called it in until he was in the car.

"Would any of them have gone in if they'd known?" Winona asked.

"Maybe not."

"Just you and him."

"Yeah, me and him."

Raylan went back inside after she'd left and found Jack sitting at the table in the kitchen, a room where he'd killed a man a few days before, and Raylan had no idea what the fuck he should do. Sell the house; buy a new one; go on with his life like he'd been doing, living alone most of the time, spending all his free time with Willa and worrying that Winona was growing to resent his presence too much.

"She fine?" Jack asked.

"I guess," Raylan said.

"Good," Jack said. "That's real good." He stood up, sending the chair skittering back across the floor. "I'm going to pack."

Raylan stood, looking stupid, he would bet, not understanding the anger that was flying off Jack like lightning on a summer day. Jack turned at the door and gave him a look of such withering scorn, he thought he should feel pain from it.

"You can either take me to bed or take me home, Raylan," Jack said, and stalked out of the kitchen where he'd killed one man, through the living room where he'd killed a couple more, and on down the hall to the bedrooms.

Raylan had followed him without intending to. At least, he couldn't recall telling his feet to go that way.

He found Jack in the still-bare guest room, bag on the bed, the few clothes from the closet half folded and in the process of being stuffed inside. The only other things he had were a collection of medication bottles in the bathroom and a toothbrush.

"I get ten seconds to choose?" Raylan asked, shooting for ironically amused and blowing the head right off indignant by mistake.

"You need more?" Jack demanded, turning around. His chest was heaving, and the outline of the bandage on the entry wound showed under the t-shirt he had on. Raylan had discovered that Jack wore jeans half a size too big and t-shirts half a size too small when given the choice. He looked like a sexed up teenager in the right light and an angry and tired man, no longer young, the rest of the time. Jack Whiteside would be 30 if he hadn't died as a child. Jack could be any age between 25 and 35, Raylan figured.

Jack's hair was messed up like he'd been running his fingers through it in frustration. Or like he'd just got out of bed, and that always worked on Raylan. "Why the hell do you need me to take you?" Raylan demanded.

"Fine, I'll call a driver," Jack said, dismissively. He turned back to his packing.

"I meant," Raylan said, coming over and sweeping the bag onto the floor with force, "why the hell do you need me to take you to bed? You ain't never had trouble demanding satisfaction in the past."

Jack turned and looked absolutely spitting mad, like a pocket-sized dog who'd found an intruder — the kind that didn't scare you, but was just big enough to rip out your throat if you weren't careful.

Raylan had been a touch attracted to Jack from the very first second he ever saw him. He'd been consumed with instant need to fuck him the last time they'd met, and all of that paled next to how desperate he was to have that angry, violent man naked under him at that very moment.

That was easy enough to accomplish, and only got him bit on the shoulder once, before they settled down into a position that left Jack's left side unbothered, but still let Raylan feel his full weight pressing Jack to the bed while he kissed him like he had all day for it.

"You are fucking me," Jack said to him. Raylan continued his nuzzling examination of this one spot behind his ear that made Jack's cock twitch even while he maintained total control over the rest of his body. His voice was even and almost disinterested and would fool anyone who didn't have that cock pressed into his belly.

"Likely," Raylan said, looking to match his insouciance with some of his own.

"The condoms are in that bag you threw across the room."

"Okay."

"So you're going to fetch it."

"In a spell."

"In a spell," Jack repeated mockingly. "Is that a corncob jabbing my thigh, or do you want to fuck, Raylan Givens?"

Raylan laughed at him and got up to do as he was told.

He knew it hurt Jack, more so than in the usual way that Jack seemed to take as a sign of his manliness that he could power through the initial pain onto the bliss on the other side. His shoulder was not healed enough for the position he had insisted on: flat on his back with his legs wound tight around Raylan's waist. Jack got his way as usual.

When they were fully untangled from each other, Jack batted Raylan's hands away when he went to check the bandages for signs they'd popped some stitches. He rolled over onto his right side eventually and let Raylan check him over and declare him fit enough.

Raylan fell asleep, head pillowed on his arm, body vented of all tension for the first time in a long while. He woke to find Jack standing by the bed digging in the suitcase that he'd set up on the bed again. "You always leave," Raylan said.

Jack looked at him, piercing his heart with a stare. "I'm standing here naked, Raylan, I'm not running off. I just needed to go piss." He dug in the bag more, then said, "You always sleep."

Raylan shrugged and smiled, trying to look charming, trying to make Jack smile back. He didn't think they'd been together enough times to be entitled to the word always, but he'd done it first, so he couldn't take issue with it.

Jack raised a brow and tugged on the pair of briefs he'd dug out. He sat on the bed, back against the wall, pillow behind his back and sighed. "I want a drink."

Raylan had a view of Jack's thigh, which was covered in fine dark hair that dwindled on his lower legs to an arrow that pointed to his small feet. Raylan reached out and ran his hand over his warm skin. If he tilted his head up, he could see Jack's face, but he leaned in and set his lips to the nearest skin instead.

"I wonder what Winona thinks of me," Jack said.

"Do you care?"

"Maybe. I — maybe."

"This about what happened in my kitchen?"

"I assume you don't mean today," Jack said.

"Don't know. Maybe I do. But I read the interview transcripts. You and her. I can see something's missing."

"Really? I never asked her to leave anything out. Maybe it's too distasteful to speak of."

"Is it?" Raylan asked, running his hand down Jack's leg like you would a skittish horse. Jack was not any sort of skittish, Raylan knew. He was doing it for his own pleasure.

"Not really. Not — it's ordinary to me. The guy, Geo, they called him. I could tell he was a horny fucker, and I played him. Made him think I was weak, pleaded with him. And when he was busy getting his dick out, I killed him." Jack shrugged.

"If you hadn't been there…"

"Yeah, maybe that's what she's thinking, Raylan, I don't know. But she watched me whore myself out to save her and her kid. And I would have sucked his ugly dick if I'd needed to. Maybe she knows that too."

"Maybe you're worried about what I think."

Jack snorted. "Probably. I'm sick in the head lately."

Raylan laughed and kissed his skin again and kept on stroking his body.

"My car is in an impound lot somewhere, and I don't seem to give enough of a fuck to get it out," Jack said. "And I want a goddamn bourbon."

"You want me to drive you home?" Raylan asked, guessing what that all meant.

"If you will," Jack said diffidently, like asking for a ride in a car was hard, but demanding sex exactly how he wanted it was easy.

"I will," Raylan told him, and rolled off the bed to go shower.

Jack waited until the sun was all the way down and they were halfway to Key West before he said, "You know, don't you."

"I know a lot of things. You want to be specific," Raylan answered him, like he was saying lines in a play, like they'd been together for all the years they'd known each other, and were used to saying the same things over and over.

"You know that Jack Whiteside is a fake," Jack said.

"I do."

"You tell anyone else?"

"Tim and Rachel."

"Rachel?"

"Deputy Brooks?" Raylan said.

"Oh, yeah, I remember her. Not Winona?"

"Didn't seem relevant. Doesn't to me anymore."

Jack made a noncommittal sound, and Raylan kept on driving.

"What happened to your hat?" Jack asked after some miles.

Jack had to be asking the question innocently, Raylan figured, but he wasn't sure he wanted to have that conversation either. "Someone shot it off my head," he said, finally.

"I'm surprised it took that long."

Raylan laughed, and looked over at Jack, very nearly said something he shouldn't. He watched the traffic and eventually said. "The guy was weird. Sick fuck. But he reminded me of you. Physically. He was built like you."

"Oh?" Jack said suggestively.

"No, not at all. He made my skin crawl. And he had this thing about, I don't know how to say it. Like he thought violence made the man or something."

"Ah," Jack said. "One of those. And if he was a slender little boy, not so tall, likely he'd been shoved in the direction of that thought pretty hard."

"He made a thing out of my hat. And — can you imagine ever calling out someone to draw in the road? Like some fucking movie?"

"Hell, no! I'd shoot a man in the back as well as the front. Dead's dead. I ain't got no time for that honour and duty horseshit. Or all the talking about it beforehand. You know that."

Raylan looked at Jack. "I wore his hat for a while after. Like I'd won a trophy."

"What'd you do with it?"

"Took it out to the outdoor range and shot it full of holes one day. Not even sure why."

When they got to Key West, Jack directed him to a strip mall just off the last bridge, and Raylan pulled in to the parking lot in front of a gun store.

Raylan followed Jack inside and watched him pick out a belt holster and a shoulder holster that would not have a strap crossing his wounded left shoulder. "You want anything?" Jack said, pulling out a wad of cash at the cashier's counter. He'd conjured up the cash in the same mysterious way he'd gotten a suitcase full of clothes, and Raylan had never asked where it came from.

"Don't really need to buy my own," he said.

Jack nodded, and pointed at a row of hats behind the counter. "Get a new hat," he said.

"Maybe someday." Raylan said.

They got back in the car and Jack told him which streets to take to end up at a house with a big deck on stilts out over the water, and a boat house nestled underneath.

"Why Key West?" Raylan asked, pulling the suitcase out of the trunk without asking if Jack wanted him to carry something.

"I own a couple of places here. A club that's more dance bar than strip club, and a bar no one knows I own so I can go drink in peace. And I thought it might be fun to live somewhere a gay man walking down the street isn't a problem every damn redneck wants to solve."

"Is it better?" Raylan asked, following Jack's lead to a staircase that took them up to the level of the living space.

"I pulled my gun on a guy in Louisville one night. Damn near had to shoot him, and all I was doing was going to the fucking store to get milk. Louisville is supposed to be hipster Kentucky, Raylan. I moved a month later, and I think I got to Florida long before you did, by the way. And so far, I ain't had to threaten to kill anyone here."

Jack's place was smaller than Raylan expected. He hoisted the suitcase just inside Jack's door, making it a question, and Jack pointed down a hall. "You want me to leave you here?" Raylan asked, figuring they needed to at least clarify that much before he went poking around the man's bedroom.

"Oh, yeah, Raylan. Once was enough to get you out of my system. I'm totally cured now. You have yourself a good life, you hear?"

"Jesus, you're a sharp tongued little shit today," Raylan said, and he was almost whistling in happiness by the time he'd dumped the suitcase in Jack's bedroom. It had more furniture than Raylan's guestroom, technically, but it looked more empty somehow.

The main room, which was an open concept room that looked perfect for the parties Raylan could never imagine Jack held, was not exactly what he'd been expecting. The furniture looked a bit like it was something his grandmother would have had in the basement. Leftovers from the fifties, Raylan thought, but it was obviously new and supposed to be stylish. There wasn't a scrap of leather or glass anywhere. Nothing was chrome-plated.

"Have a drink," Jack said. "Have a seat."

"I don't need to if you're," Raylan nodded at the pill bottle in Jack's hand.

Jack grinned at him and knocked back a pill dry, and then he upended the bottle and shook it. "Last one. Have a drink, Raylan. Bourbon." Jack pointed at a sideboard that looked like something from an old movie with crystal decanters and glasses lined up on it.

"You do like to boss me around," Raylan said, and went and poured a drink. he shucked his jacket and dumped it on a chair just to ruin the too-clean look of the joint. And he sat on the sofa and raised his glass to Jack who was watching him intently. "Holy shit, Jack, you like the good stuff," he said when he'd taken a drink.

"Expensive tastes," Jack said. "Always been my problem."

Raylan figured Jack wanted something, was waiting for something, but he found out it was just for Raylan to put the glass down. Jack strode over, and straddled his lap like a pro in a backroom, and he had both arms around Raylan's neck and was kissing him deeply before Raylan could make a bad joke about lap dances.

"God damn, that tastes good," Jack said arching his back and stretching back. "I don't much like your car though."

"What do you drive?" Raylan asked him. "Some little Italian number that goes too fast and looks like a sex toy?"

Jack laughed. "Sometimes I fly back and forth to Miami, but my car is a very nondescript silver Honda. A million of them on the road."

Raylan held him around his waist, let his hands stray to Jack's ass. The position he was in dealt nicely with the big flaw of baggy jeans. Raylan loved the way it felt to touch Jack like that, and he was thinking again about saying something about how he felt that might get him in trouble. "Someone told me once I got more balls than sense," he said.

"Once?" Jack asked archly.

"Funny. Your shoulder okay?"

"For now."

Raylan ran his hands up Jack's back and pulled him in close. "I've been thinking about what you said in the hospital. Do you remember?"

Jack threaded his fingers in Raylan's hair and pulled hard, tilting his head back so Jack could look down at him. "I was not that high, I remember what you said, too."

"What if I said I want to do that again?"

"What if I said that scares me to death?"

"I'd say you got more balls than me most of the time, Jack, take a chance."

The way it had started in Louisville, in the weird house Jack had been camping in, Raylan had touched his face, softly, and it had been almost an accident, but he'd seen something in Jack's eyes, something that looked unfeigned, like the man inside had peeked out at him for just a second, and he'd been hooked. He'd wanted to see him again.

Raylan tried the same move, regretfully leaving Jack's ass to cup his face and run his thumb over his lips. Jack closed his eyes, and Raylan was almost sorry, but Jack sighed and nodded, like he'd come to a decision, and then he touched Raylan the same way.

What was different about it once they were naked and in a bed, fucking much like they always did, Raylan wasn't entirely sure, but he felt like it was something he couldn't walk back from. He hadn't the last time — he'd run, afraid of what Jack had found inside him.

The past and the future is a fight to the death, Ava had said to him. And he'd been trying to walk away from the past as long as he'd known. Maybe Ava was wrong. Maybe the past was just a map to where you needed to go. She'd got away clean, so maybe he could too.

He didn't do anything as stupid as tell Jack he was in love with him. He'd done that once, and he'd learned the hard way how hard Jack hit back. He just loved him, and maybe that was the difference, and maybe he'd always understood how that was one thing and sex another.

He tried not to fall asleep, but he was who he was.

He woke to find Jack standing by the bed, phone in hand, staring at it with the serious face that Raylan had begun to wonder if anyone else ever saw. He knew Jack knew he was awake.

"I'm totally naked, Raylan. Not running away."

"Come here," Raylan said, holding out his hand.  

"I — hold that thought." Jack frowned at the phone and tossed it in the drawer of his dresser. Raylan saw a gun in there while the drawer was open, and a few other things that piqued his interest.

Jack came back in with a glass of liquor, bourbon by the smell when he got closer, and he sat on the bed, legs drawn up and arms wrapped around them so he was facing Raylan but out of reach. "I need some illicit booze for this," Jack told him.

Raylan went still.

"Hand me that star of yours," Jack said, gesturing at the table on Raylan's side of the bed.

"Why?" Raylan asked, wary.

"Just, please, let me look at it up close."

Raylan rolled over and picked up his Marshal's star and rolled back, extending it on his palm.

Jack leaned in and picked it up, studied it, rubbing his thumb over the metal. He took a drink. Looked up. "The first man who ever — how to put it? — made improper advances is the polite term. Wanted to fuck me by force is maybe the truth. He had one of these." He kept looking at Raylan, but then, he'd gone in that house. He'd stayed in that house. He had balls. "I was 13," Jack said.

"WITSEC," Raylan said, as soon as the obvious truth penetrated the fog of rage in his mind.

"You are a smart man, Raylan. He was the man assigned to our case. He told me if I didn't, he'd burn my family's cover and my parents would be killed."

Raylan tried not to move, afraid a sudden shift would break something, like his own self-control. "What did you do?"

Jack laughed, bitterly. "Did I whore myself out to protect my family? No, they didn't deserve it. The point of this story is not a sad tale of an innocent youth led astray by a bad man. The point of this story is that, the first time I had to decide if I would whore myself out, I was 13 years old. It's also the first time I had to decide if I would kill a man." Jack handed back the badge.

Raylan took it, tucked it under his pillow and remembered Jack was no fragile creature ready to bolt. He reached out, slid closer and ran his hand over the underside of Jack's calf. The skin was soft, the muscles strong. Jack obligingly stretched his leg out closer.

Raylan said, "I thought about it at that age. Killing a man. One man."

"Like a fantasy? Or like a plan to pull the trigger and run away?"

"Halfway in between, I guess. No place to go was the trouble." Raylan set his lips to Jack's skin and tasted a little salt. They'd exerted themselves a little. "You said to me one time that most guys just want to get off with a man's hands on their bodies."

Jack nodded. "It's true. But the few that aren't like that leave a lasting impression."

Raylan could imagine that. "You ever go back and kill that Marshal?"

"Why? You want to?"

"Little bit."

"What are we doing, Raylan?" Jack demanded.

Raylan sucked in a breath. "A long time ago, I got in trouble telling for you I was in love with you. But I think now, looking back, if I'd listened to myself then, I'd have saved a lot of trouble."

"How so?"

"Oh, all sorts of bullshit. I convinced myself I could cut out that part of me, like it was an extra limb or something. Something you don't need, like your appendix. I could just pretend that wasn't who I was. I tried real hard, like a dunk staying off the bottle by hitting the weed all the time."

"So in this analogy, women are dope?" Jack said, amused.

"No, Jack," Raylan said, moving closer so he could feel up more interesting parts of Jack's body. "Casual sex is dope. I ain't claiming they were all women. Not once I got past thinking me and Winona were going to work."

"And I'm the good stuff? Aren't I the drug you get addicted to but can have in polite company? I think you got this analogy backwards, Raylan."

"Jack—"

"Raylan, I am never telling you my name, not the one I was given first, not the one WITSEC gave me. I'm never telling you where I'm from."

"Some place not so different from Harlan."

Jack waved that away. "Raylan, I don't date. I don't have relationships. Hell, I almost never have sex. I let the hair down there go wild because I don't give a shit."

"I like it," Raylan said, sliding his hand around Jack's hip and bending towards him to run his scratchy beard along his leg. He was tempted to just shove him over and give him a blowjob to shut him up, but if Jack had things to say, he had to listen.

"Raylan, what the hell are we doing?" He said, louder, testier than before.

Raylan sighed. "You can stop living in hotel rooms when you're in Miami. Other than that, why complicate it?"

"And live with you? And your kid if she's there?"

"Yeah, and her. I have a family, Jack, that's part of who I am, but I can't have that be all of it anymore."

"That's crazy."

"No it ain't," Raylan said. "No. Listen, now, if Winona had got a gun, say one of those guys got careless, what do you think she would have done?"

"Killed them all," Jack said, shrugging like that was both obvious and irrelevant.

"Just like you did, or almost did. Or if I'd been home? I'd have taken them all out. No one else, Jack. You, me and her, we're the only ones who would do that."

"And you're just going to drive down here to the Keys when you want a day off by the water?"

"Sure, you cleaned up your record for a reason, didn't you?"

Jack rubbed his forehead and frowned.

"Jack," Raylan said, grinning at him, letting Jack really see how he felt, that being with him made him happy. "I got a story for you, so listen up. Summer I was 17, I went to baseball camp in this little town in West Virginia. It was a real camp too, living in tents and all that shit. Just me and 50 other baseball-playing boys."

Jack gave him his best stare, and Raylan laughed, in something like joy, maybe, for the first time in a long time.

"I met this kid there, name of Richie, and Richie was from a real nice family, you know? Had more money in his baseball cleats than I did in my whole net worth, but that ain't important. I'll tell you some time about that part. The part that's important is — gimme that bourbon, would you?"

Jack looked suspicious but handed over the glass. Raylan took a long pull on what was left and gasped at the feel of it going down. He left enough for a chaser for after and set the glass down on the table.

"What's important, Jack, is what we spent our time practising."

"Baseball?" Jack asked watching Raylan gather himself up on his knees.

"No, Jack, not baseball." Raylan shoved him over and shut him up. They could sort out their living arrangements when Raylan had a house to live in that wasn't full of bullet holes.

-~***~-

"Art Mullen," Raylan said from his doorway. "You grew the beard back."

"Damn right," Art said, smiling, coming forward to shake Raylan's hand and smile like he was happy to see him.

Raylan hadn't laid eyes on him since the day he'd gone to Tramble to see Boyd, but he hadn't been very surprised when Art called to say he'd be in Florida and could he drop by. Everyone showed up in Florida eventually, judging by the numbers of relatives Winona and Richard had dropping in all the time.

"Come on in the kitchen, I got coffee on," Raylan told him inside the front door. He saw Art notice the old boots on the floor, next to a pair of Raylan's own that were considerably larger. He saw Art look around the place with an interest beyond what the odd decor should conjure up.

Raylan loved his new house, and he loved the kitchen best. It was painted yellow for a start, the table an old chrome-legged thing with a formica top in a pattern of yellow flowers. The chairs were a mismatched wooden set all padded out with the same sky-blue cushions. The cookware sitting out was cast iron enamelled over in ice cream colours. He'd not known there were so many colours.

He got Art a coffee in a blue cup the colour of the sky in the mountains, and filled his own, a shade of not really pink, not really peach that he was considering painting the outside of his house. He'd not won approval for that from his decorator, however.

"Raylan, this house sure is interesting," Art said. "And this is the best coffee I've had, possibly in my life."

"Willa is my decorator," Raylan said.

"I had wondered."

"It started as therapy, I guess. We go out when she's here on a Saturday and we buy something for the house, or we pick out paint. Took a while, but she figured it weren't a joke when I followed through, and she seems to like knowing she can make the place happy if she's feeling it. She's learning about budgets too."

"She's okay?" Art asked.

"What kid is ever okay after armed thugs kidnap them? Particularly when it all ends in gunfire and blood and death. Changing houses is just the reminder that life goes on, and you might be able to pretend it's safe again. It ain't a memory wipe."

"No, I guess not."

"We're all doing okay, though."

"All?"

Raylan sat back, at ease. "That coffee you're drinking is what Jack insists on. That and the booze. Otherwise, he mooches off of me pretty much all the time." Raylan grinned a challenge at Art, daring him to question that allocation of money. It was true for the most part, although the security system on the house had come with a price Raylan was told not to question.

"Jack Whiteside," Art said, with something like distaste. "So that's true. He lives here?"

"He ain't no boarder, Art, so watch how you go on. Yeah, some of the time he's here. He lives in Key West."

"What the hell are you doing, Raylan?"

Raylan laughed. "That's funny because he asked me that too. More than once. I'll tell you what I told him. He went in that house of mine, and he killed more'n his share of the thugs threatening my family. No one else did a damn thing, Art."

"Except for some sniper no one ever identified."

Raylan nodded. "Yup, whoever that was."

"So you're grateful, I get that, and you have never been able to resist the bad ones, but Raylan—"

"It ain't gratitude. Art, for christ's sake, if I was grateful I'd have, I don't know what the fuck I'd have done, driven him home from the hospital, I guess, and said call me if you want a favour. This goes back long before that day, me and him. And all that day showed me was the character of the man inside all his bullshit. All it showed me was who he really is."

"A killer," Art said.

"Yeah. Like me."

"It's not the same, Raylan."

"No? You know, Boyd Crowder is smart enough to understand that he walked down a path I coulda gone down too. But what it took me a time to understand is, guys like him, hell half those goddamn LEOs picking their asses outside my house that day, they'd only go in hot for money or for the thrill. Guys like Tim, even, they're in it for their brothers, their unit, their partners. They don't think beyond that."

"And Jack's some honourable man? That's what you're saying?"

"No, I'm not. He would laugh at that. You know that thing we all like to do where we say it's us and them, the police and the criminals? Jack can't even see that line. He looks at the world from some other place to you and me, some place I ain't quite been to. And he went in that house, and the good guys picked their asses."

"And if he does something to fuck up your career?"

"What career, Art? They ain't making me Chief Deputy, and I quit hoping for any promotion. I have my family to think about. Let me put this to you how maybe you'll understand. Before all this went down, I was happy enough, living my life, fucking people half my age, drinking too much, seeing my daughter too little. Me and every guy with a wife and kid in a different house."

"No offence, Raylan, but you've been doing that for years," Art said sharply.

"Yeah, I have. I was. And one day some mobbed up piece of shit offered me a suitcase of untraceable cash, and I didn't say no very fast. Because how was I keeping that life going? I'm roaring up on 50 and going grey, and if I was going to keep on down the road I'd picked, I was going to need money once my charms faded away, and I'd turned into some old man with a flask in his pocket and a glib line."

"So you solved that problem by finding some guy half your age who comes complete with the suitcase of cash?"

"I don't use suitcases of cash in my business," Jack said, breezing in. "I have annoying lunches with city councilmen, and I keep my money in a damn bank that skims their cut worse than a laundry man."

Jack had shed his jacket somewhere, and the straps of his shoulder holster showed stark against the high-collared white silk of his shirt. He went right for the coffee, filling an oversized raspberry-coloured mug. His suit pants were tighter than usual.

"Was this councilman Dragovitch?" Raylan asked, ignoring Art's frown of disapproval.

"Yeah."

"He still alive?" Raylan asked, amused, and more so when Jack turned to level a stare at him. He stayed leaning on the counter and focused on Raylan.

"I can't kill him, Raylan. Those people, you pop one of them, ten more show up with their hands out."

"He did hit on you, though." Raylan sipped his coffee, and looked at Art, who was thinking over things, if Raylan still could judge the man.

"He hit on me, the waiter, the guy at the next table. If I'd punched him in the mouth, the waiter would have married me."

"Was he hot? The waiter? Young, likely."

"Oh, sure. Way better'n you."

"Likely has odd taste in music. The young usually do."

"True. True enough," Jack said, like they did this comedy act all the time.

"And he'd make fun of your accent when you're drunk."

Jack laughed at him at little meanly.

"I'm supposed to ask what business this is," Art said.

"Yeah, you could do that," Jack said, turning to face him. "You could. I've sunk all my money in a deal to build a development in Miami for a shopping centre across from a place where they're building a great big ice hockey arena. Whatever the hell Miami needs that for, I don't know, but the smart people I pay to tell me these things, tell me it's a good deal."

"A shopping centre?" Art said.

"You think I bribed you to clean my record for no reason? Fuck, I need out of this suit." Jack stalked off, coffee left steaming on the counter to mark his place.

"And if someone questions where his money comes from?" Art asked Raylan. "And you end up fired?"

"He told me he'd buy me a red Ferrari and I could become a private detective in Key West."

"Funny," Art said.

Raylan shrugged. He'd laughed at the time and claimed he was better looking than a TV detective. It had been a good night.

Jack came back in jeans and a t-shirt, gun not in sight, bare feet poking out from frayed hems, hair tousled. He looked ten years younger, just like always. He had a bottle of bourbon in his hand and he set it, none too gently, on the table and added three glasses.

"It's a little early, isn't it?" Art asked, eyeing the bottle with interest. Jack had not brought out anything cheap.

"Have it or not, but I need a drink. I want to ask you a question."

Jack poured a double in his own glass and avoided Raylan's questioning gaze.

"Okay," Art said, taking a splash and moving it around in his glass a bit before he tasted it.

"You know a guy named Gideon Meredith?"

Art usually had a hell of a poker face, but he sat up, slapped his glass down, and said, "Why the hell are you asking me that?" in a voice cold with anger.

Jack didn't flinch, just nodded. "So that's a yes. Where is he?"

"Dead."

Jack froze, and Raylan would bet Art couldn't see it, couldn't see the tremor in his hand or the character of his still and lifeless expression.

"Now tell me how you know him," Art demanded.  

Jack ignored him completely.

"You didn't know?" Raylan asked quietly. He reached out and took the glass from Jack's hand, rubbed his thumb along Jack's wrist in passing, and knocked back a big shot of the top-shelf liquor. Only the good stuff for Jack Whiteside.

Jack shook his head. "I never looked, never had the balls. Or didn't want to know."

"You were in WITSEC," Art said, more surprised than he should have been, Raylan thought.

Everything about Jack was artifice, costumes, poses and lies. Until you got down to the man inside. But Raylan figured no one else knew that man but him. Jack was dressed up as a young and helpless boy right at that very minute.

Jack just nodded at Art.

"Meredith was murdered by a woman," Art said. "Bout five years ago."

Jack looked up. "But?" He'd heard the tone in Art's voice.

"There's questions about the case. She confessed."

"She has children?"

"Yes," Art said, not hiding his distress. "Yes, two boys and a girl, all under 15 at the time."

Jack nodded. "College age now."

"Yeah."

"One of them did it, you think? You know which one?"

"It's rumours, Jack, no one really knows what the hell happened. What the hell happened to you? How do you know any of this?"

"I didn't kill him when I was 13 is what happened. Or later. Seems I should have."

"Or reported him," Art said primly.

Jack laughed, rudely. "Oh, come on. You think I didn't tell? And you know, Art, some kids don't. Ain't it someone else's job to root out that evil, other than the kid himself?"

"It is, it is," Art said, chagrined.

"How do know about this guy?" Raylan asked Art.

"Everybody in the service of a certain age knows about this. He was on suspension when he was killed. On his way out."

Raylan said, "Too late, sounds like."

"Way too late. Not that this excuses anything you've done," Art said to Jack.

"Oh, go to hell," Jack told him. "What the hell have I done that you or Raylan ain't done ten times over? Other than sell my ass? That's my real sin, isn't it. I used to think back when I was younger and angrier that if I'd been some nice blonde girl, maybe someone would have given a shit. But I was this obvious little faggot, obvious to everyone before it was obvious to me, so no one I told, and I'll give you the damn list of people I reported him to if you like, none of them did more than call me names and cover it up."

"I don't even know how to answer any of that," Art said.

Raylan smiled. The fog machine in his Miami club had nothing on Jack. "You used to think?" Raylan asked, more used to picking out the salient points.

"I've met some of those women who used to be the cute blonde girl who was abused. It ain't no better. Maybe worse. You know, you tell one of them to get a gun, and they look at you all shocked like it never crossed their minds."

Raylan knew a blonde who hadn't been shy with a weapon, but then she'd been raised to it like him. "I remember being younger and angrier too," Raylan said. "Art, you know, I get why you came, why you thought that, absent any sort of parental advice in my life, you should tell me why I should do what looks like the right thing to outside eyes. But I'm not interested in how anyone else thinks I should live."

"Just your decorator," Jack said, amused.

"Just her," Raylan nodded, tapping his ring on the edge of his cup.

"I think I'm beginning to see why you two paired up," Art said.

"He don't snore," Raylan said.

"Not that anyone would hear me," Jack countered.

"You got a pen and paper?" Art demanded.

"Sure," Raylan said.

"I want that list," Art said to Jack. "I might be retired, but I still have some pull."

Jack laughed. "You calling my bluff? Okay, you tell me the names of these kids and which one killed that fucker."

"Why?" Art asked.

"Because for him, I'll pay for his therapy, too, not just a college education like the others."

"You're serious?" Art sounded unsure, but Raylan noticed that he didn't correct Jack's assumption that it had been one of the boys.

"Yes, sir," Jack said, briskly, "I don't have all my money in that shopping centre deal. Ice hockey? The hell with that, I'm letting the bankers take the risk."

"Raylan, go get us two sheets of paper and some pens," Art said.

Raylan did as he was told, and he watched two people he'd chosen to be his family make a deal that was a lot less selfishly motivated than most of them he'd witnessed over the years. He considered that for a bit and decided the occasion justified a drink he didn't steal out of Jack's glass.

It was a fine American liquor that Jack had chosen. Sweet like corn sugar and smokey like gunpowder. It burned going down like Raylan had swallowed fire.


End file.
